She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic and more.

Her short online classes for writers intense with plenty of personal feedback. Writing Fight Scenes, Writing Scary Scenes, Writing about Magic and Magicians, The Word Loss Diet and more.

Absolutely everything. I've loved horror movies and books since I was little, so while these days I enjoy reading almost any genre, when it comes to writing, I'm happiest when I'm writing horror.
Oh, and I love the opportunity to give someone the creeps. I recently read a story of mine to my classes that I thought was fairly innocuous, but was pleasantly surprised when many of my students said it was "freaky."

3. Many people enjoy reading stories about undead creatures - ghosts, vampires, zombies.
What do you think is the appeal?

I think these three examples appeal on different levels. If I were to oversimplify, I would say people like ghosts because it gives them a sense of something beyond death. Vampires is a desire for immortality. Zombies... well, for that one, I think it's more about the characters other than the zombies that has the appeal. People want to believe that in a zombie apocalypse, they would be able to survive.

4. Have any of your stories been inspired by mythology?

Actually, yes. My story "The Interview" was heavily influenced by mythology, specifically the story of Phineus, a Phoenician king who was blinded by Zeus for his ability to see into the future.

5. Your story “Another Oldie But Goodie” in Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies (edited by Rayne Hall) starts with a retirement home resident hearing music nobody else can hear, and leads to raising a long dead person from the grave. Where did the ideas for this story come from?

This was originally a flash piece for the Vamplit Publishing blog. The theme for the week was "Love in the Cemetery," I think. Then it was kind of a perfect storm of events that brought the actual story together, the biggest of which being when my 99 year-old grandmother, who doesn't move very fast but is still sharp as a tack, informed my father and I one day while we were visiting that she had been hearing the song "Ave Maria" at various points throughout the day where no one was actually playing it. At that point, I started putting together the story of the nursing home resident, and I knew it was her dead husband that was singing to her (don't worry, this comes out in the story pretty early). From there it was a matter of picking out the song, something fitting for the time. And the rest of the pieces just fell into place, especially the ending.

Thank you for joining us, Paul. May 2013 be a year of many more creative ideas and fantastic success.

==========================

About Paul D. Dail

Paul D. Dail is the author of The Imaginings, a supernatural/horror novel, as well as several other horror short stories. While he will quickly tell you that the people he has met in the many places that he has traveled have been the best schooling he could get, Paul received his formal education in English with a Creative Writing emphasis at the University of Montana, Missoula.
In addition to his fiction, he has had a non-fiction submission published in The Sun magazine's Reader's Write section entitled "Slowing Down" about the birth of his daughter.
Currently Paul lives in southern Utah, amid the red rock, sagebrush and pinion junipers. He teaches Language Arts and Creative Writing at Tuacahn High School for the Performing Arts.

Douglas Kolacki writes exciting fantasy
stories, often with a Christian flavour, about zombies, pirates and almost
normal people. Today he tells us about his writing pleasures and inspirations.

1. What do you enjoy most about writing
fantasy fiction?

Remaking this world into a place more to my
liking, where all the rules change and fantastic things come to life.

2.
Many people enjoy reading stories about undead creatures - ghosts, vampires,
zombies. What do you think is the appeal?

I
think that in the case of ghosts and vampires, it's the mystery of it all--who
hasn't been intrigued by ghosts and the undead? In the case of zombies, there's
a sense of adventure in combating all these people-turned-monsters that can't
be parleyed with, bribed or placated; you have to use your wits and whatever
you can scrounge, do or die.

3. The story selected by editor Rayne
Hall s for the anthology Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies features a human
who adjusts to life in a zombie body. Where did this idea come from?

I
wanted to tell a story from the zombie's point of view, and not only that, one
that has a conscience. What if, as one of those who's been
"initiated" into that kind of existence, he's seen how they get that
way, and along with that comes a possibility of gaining your eternal rest at
last? Most zombies don't have the awareness anymore to understand it, but this
guy does. He determines to do something about it.

Thank you, Douglas. We wish you and your
stories a successful 2013.

============

About Douglas Kolacki

Douglas Kolacki has lived in Australia and
in Naples, Italy, where he began writing. His specialty is creating fantasy
worlds out of everyday modern life. He currently lives and writes in Providence,
Rhode Island. His novels are Elijah's Chariot and On the Eighth Day,
God Created Trilby Richardson. His stories have been featured in Weird
Tales, Dragons Knights and Angels, Big Pulp, The Devil Eats Here, Haunted: Ten
Tales of Ghosts, Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates,
Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies and Spells: Ten Tales of Magic.

3. Many people enjoy reading stories
about undead creatures - ghosts, vampires, zombies. What do you think is the
appeal?

I think the appeal differs from reader to
reader. Some are fascinated by the possibility of a continued existence after
death; some find the idea terrifying or abhorrent, yet feel compelled to
explore or that terror.

4. Have any of your stories been
inspired by mythology?

I have a story coming out in Dagan Books’
FISH anthology in January 2013 which was inspired by a Maori mythological
creature, the taniwha. I use the term “mythological” loosely; some Maori
believe that taniwha exist.

5. In “Last Chance to See” published in Undead:
Ten Tales of Zombies (edited by Rayne Hall) the main character gets reincarnated
for twenty-four hours to say farewell to her friends and family. Where did the
idea come from?

“Last Chance to See” has a deeply personal
origin. One of my aunts was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. The family
organised a small reunion, and I drove with my three young children from one
end of the North Island of New Zealand to the other to see her (you can do that
in one day if you start early; New Zealand’s not very big). It felt something
like a wake, only with the “guest of honour” still present and participating.
There was more laughter than you might expect, naturally a few tears, some
blackly funny moments as my aunt told us of her experiences going shopping for
something to wear in her coffin, and even although it was a momentous and meaningful
occasion, the banal necessities of life still had to be attended to. I got to
thinking – what if everybody had the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones
before they departed for good?

Thank you for answering our questions,
Tracie. May 2013 bring you many more twisted ideas for great stories!

About Tracie McBride
Tracie McBride is a New Zealander who lives in Melbourne, Australia with her
husband and three children. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 80
print and electronic publications, including Horror Library Vols 4 and 5,
Dead Red Heart, Phobophobia and Horror for Good. Her debut
collection Ghosts Can Bleed contains much of the work that earned her a Sir
Julius Vogel Award in 2008. She helps to wrangle slush for Dark Moon Digest and
is the vice president of Dark Continents Publishing. She welcomes visitors to
her blog at http://traciemcbridewriter.wordpress.com/.

She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic and more.

Her short online classes for writers intense with plenty of personal feedback. Writing Fight Scenes, Writing Scary Scenes, Writing about Magic and Magicians, The Word Loss Diet and more.

Here are five short story collections I
enjoyed, each by a different contemporary author, each published recently in
ebook format. The selection is highly
subjective, based on my personal taste. I like stories which are creepy,
quirky, twisted or dark, or which allow me to peek into different cultures and
faraway places.

Dec 24, 2012

"The low, undulating Danish landscape was silent and serene, mysteriously wide-awake in the hour before sunrise. There was not a cloud in the pale sky, not a shadow along the dim, pearly fields, hills and woods. The mist was lifting from the valleys and hollows, the air was cool, the grass and the foliage dripping wet with morning dew. Unwatched by the eyes of man, undisturbed by his activity, the country breathed a timeless life, to which language was inadequate.

All the same, a human race had lived on this land for a thousand years, had been formed by its soil and weather, and had marked it with its thoughts, so that now no one could tell where the existence of the one ceased and the other began. The thin gray line of road, winding across the plain and up and down the hills, was the fixed materialization of human longing, and of the notion that it is better to be in one place than another."

She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic and more.

Her short online classes for writers intense with plenty of personal feedback. Writing Fight Scenes, Writing Scary Scenes, Writing about Magic and Magicians, The Word Loss Diet and more.

Does your story have a scene of danger or
horror? Is it scary enough? Do you want your readers to fear for your main
character's safety? Here's a simple technique on how to make a scene seriously
frightening:

Turn the lights off.

Darkness makes people nervous, and
everything is much more frightening in the dark. Can you change the time or
location of your scene so it happens in darkness? The darker, the better.
Absolute darkness is the scariest, when the protagonist sees nothing at all and
has to grope their way. However, partial darkness can be spooky, too,
especially with flickering lights and shadows.

She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic and more.

Her short online classes for writers intense with plenty of personal feedback. Writing Fight Scenes, Writing Scary Scenes, Writing about Magic and Magicians, The Word Loss Diet and more.

She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic and more.

Her short online classes for writers intense with plenty of personal feedback. Writing Fight Scenes, Writing Scary Scenes, Writing about Magic and Magicians, The Word Loss Diet and more.

Here's sadly common conversation from an
indie forum, quoted from memory.

Newbie Writer 1: "My book has been published on Amazon
for three months, and nobody is buying it. What is Amazon doing wrong?"

Newbie Writer 2: "You have to lower
the price. It's all about price."

Newbie Writer 1: "Is $15.99 too much? But I put in all
this work! I deserve the money."

Newbie Writer 2: "The authors who sell
books for $0.99 rake in tons of money. I've read an article about it. They're
all millionaires."

A glance at the book in question reveals
that it's something I wouldn't download even if it were free.

Sadly, many indie authors are fixated on
price, convinced that there's nothing wrong with the quality of their book and
that they'll rake in riches if only they can hit the magical formula for the
perfect price.

She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic and more.

Her short online classes for writers intense with plenty of personal feedback. Writing Fight Scenes, Writing Scary Scenes, Writing about Magic and Magicians, The Word Loss Diet and more.

The five main senses are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching.

Seeing

This sense is the easiest to use, but it can be boring if used a lot. Choose details which characterise the place and show only what the point-of-view character would notice. To create atmosphere, describe the source and quality of the light. Examples: Blossoming dittany spilled over the slope. Black clouds smeared the sky. Punchbags hung like giant misshapen sausages from the wall. Tiny lizards darted across the broken floor tiles, tongues flicking. Golden sunlight dappled the lawn. Sundown bloodied the horizon.

The music room was on the first floor at the end of a long hallway. James made his way toward it, each step making him more sure that he didn’t know what he would say once he saw her. But Kate was here. Kate. Surely, he’d think of something—the right thing—when he came face-to-face with her.

He stopped several paces from the door. The strains of Moonlight Sonata floated out of the room. She was playing the pianoforte again. She loved that piece.

Taking a deep breath, James opened the door without knocking. He stepped inside the darkened room. The music stopped. Only a single candelabra burned on top of the instrument.

Kate glanced up at him, her blue eyes wide.

“James.”

He expelled his breath. He’d thought it might be a dream, her being here, some cruel joke Lily had played on him. But there Kate was, sitting on the piano stool, across from the French doors, wearing a ruby red gown that made him shudder. She looked like a dream come to life. He squinted. The firelight bounced off her silken hair. He longed to run his fingers through it.

(Huffington Post) WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department announced Tuesday it has reached a settlement with Penguin Group (USA) Inc. in its lawsuit accusing the nation's largest book publishers of colluding with Apple Inc. to raise e-book prices on customers.

The settlement, if approved by a federal judge, leaves Apple and Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC, which does business as Macmillan, as the only defendants standing against the federal government's charges that Apple, the multimedia and computer giant, conspired with several publishers in the fall of 2009 to force e-book prices several dollars above the $9.99 charged by Amazon.com on its popular Kindle device.

The Justice Department, which sued in April, settled with Hachette Book Group, Inc., HarperCollins Publishers LLC and Simon & Schuster Inc. earlier this year. The trial is scheduled to begin in June.

"The proposed settlement with Penguin will be an important step toward undoing the harm caused by the publishers' anticompetitive conduct and restoring retail price competition so consumers can pay lower prices for Penguin's e-books," said Jamillia Ferris, chief of staff and counsel at the Justice Department's antitrust division.

Apple Inc. has said the government's accusation that it conspired with major book publishers to raise the price of e-books is untrue.

A Vampire Carol

Excerpt:

Alex stayed in the dumpster until
nightfall. He crept out and stood in the alley, trying to understand, trying to
believe, and failing. He recognized the back of his office building.

His car was still parked in the
parking garage, on the fifth floor. The keys were in his jacket pocket. Dazed,
he opened the car, but for a long while, he sat in the driver’s seat, with his
key in the ignition and his foot on the pedal, without turning on the engine.
His mind refused to work.

He knew he should go home because
Lynn would be worried, alone with baby Bradley. Lynn would have questions
though and a long list of ways this was his fault. He couldn’t fight with her
right now. He needed support. He needed a friend.

Justin lived with his brother,
two years younger, who attended school part-time and worked part time, in a
pale blue house at the end of a cul-de-sac. Justin had his degree and was a sys
admin, like Alex, at a different company. Alex and Justin had been buddies
since college, although since Alex married and had a baby, and Justin stayed
single, they had found themselves divided by the secret segregation that keeps
Married Couples apart from Single Guys.

Alex knocked at the door. No
answer. He pounded.

Gary, Justin’s brother answered
the door.

“Hey, Alex.” Gary took a swig of
a beer. “Justin’s out.”

He was the first person Alex had
seen since waking up in the dumpster. Gary looked…strange. A faint but hot mist
steamed from his skin, creating a ruddy glow around his body. The aroma was
savory.

Gary turned and padded down the
hall, leaving the door opened. Alex tried to follow, but when he tried to cross
the threshold, it was as if he were trying to walk through invisible taffy. It
wasn’t like walking into a wall, but it repelled him all the same. He couldn’t
follow Gary.

And he wanted to, very, very
badly.

Gary looked back at him. “You
okay?”

“I….” Alex licked his lips. He
clenched and unclenched his hands. His stomach hurt, and his throat felt as
though he had swallowed broken glass.

“I’m thirsty,” he whispered
hoarsely.

“Come on in,” said Gary.

The invisible taffy dissolved so
abruptly that Alex, who had been leaning into the force, stumbled forward. He
caught himself against the wall, panting. His vision narrowed to a tunnel,
focused on the red mist around Gary. Alex could hear Gary’s heart beating, and
the gurgle of his blood pumping in and out. The delicious smell, the throbbing
sound as loud as music at a rave, the hot, red mist…

Gary rummaged around in the
fridge and pulled out another beer, which he held out to Alex.

I know from personal experience that fans get grouchy if they have to wait for the next installment of an epic fantasy. Granted no one has made me a YouTube video yet... or an HBO show. *grin*
I like the part where they go over how long various authors took to write various projects. Also, the dueling drumsticks.

Rice in North Korea was distributed by the government. Despite the
official Communist ideology of “equality,” everything, even the daily ration of
rice, was regulated by a strict caste system.

During the 1990s, rampant corruption and government mismanagement of the
country’s resources resulted in a terrible famine. Rice rations were cut across
the nation, but especially for the less “desirable” castes.

The Kwons were one such couple. Every day, while her husband watched
carefully, Mrs. Kwon distributed their rice into equal amounts….equal amounts
of less and less.

Mrs. Kwon stared at the small amount of food and despaired.

I can survive
on less because I am a woman, thought Mrs. Kwon. But my husband cannot. Better that at least
one of us survive.

As soon as her husband left the room, Mrs. Kwon took one measure of rice
from her bowl and added it to her husband’s bowl. Then she went outside to
fetch water.

As soon as she was gone, Mr. Kwon, unaware of what she had done, looked
at the small bowls of rice and despaired.

I can
survive on less because I am stronger, thought Mr. Kwon. But my wife is so slender to begin with; if
she tries to live on this she’ll waste away to nothing. He took one measure
of his rice and added it to her bowl.

This became their custom every morning. Neither of them could understand
why the amount of rice never seemed less.

But the famine grew worse. Once again, the ration of rice was lowered.
When Mrs. Kwon tried to put a measure of her rice into her husband’s bowl,
there were only a few grains of rice left in her own.

“Where is your rice?” he
asked, when she handed him the bowl.

“Oh,” she said. “I ate it already.”

“That was fast,” he said.

“Rice runs away so fast these days,” she said. “Mine ran out the door
before I could eat it!”

He laughed, as she meant him too, but as soon as she went outside to
fetch the water, he scooped all his rice back into her bowl.

“What is this!” she cried when she saw it.

“You were right about the rice!” said Mr. Kwon. “It did run right out
the door, but it was only doing a lap around the house for exercise. It ran
right back in and jumped into your bowl again!”

They looked at each other and each realized then what the other had been
doing for so long. They realized that they could not continue like this any
longer, so that night they made the decision to escape to China.

It was a long, perilous journey, made all the worse because they had to
cross in winter, when the river that divided the two countries was frozen. But
eventually they made it, and once in China, they were able to hide in an
embassy until a church in the United States sponsored them to come to America. Even
after they were safe and prosperous in their new home, however, every Christmas
they would each exchange a spoonful of rice, to remind themselves of the love
that had endured the worst hunger.

Dec 18, 2012

About A Vampire Carol

This is not, despite the title, another re-telling of Dicken's classic. (There are already several vampire and zombie versions available, if you want one, don't fear!) It's a story I've had knocking around my brain bins for a while. But I didn't know what to do with it. Vampire vs Werewolf would be trite on its own, if there were not some other interest, but this story was too brutal for the comic My Three Werewolf Sons story I was originally contemplating. (I haven't given up on that idea either, however.)

Most
authors have half-finished stories which languish, abandoned, on a drive or in
a drawer, because the author has no idea how to complete it. Then suddenly, and
brilliant idea brings everything together—like how about spicing up an overripe
premise of vampire-werewolf rivalry with a fiber optic Christmas tree and a
life-size nativity set?

For copyright reasons, this is available as a stand-alone only on non-Amazon sites. For Kindle readers, it can be found as part of the Christmas Tales anthology.

Back Cover:

The last thing Alex wanted was to become a vampire for Christmas... or
to feed on his best friend's brother. His friend will do anything for
revenge. Even become a werewolf.

Can there be such a thing as forgiveness for monsters?

This is an urban fantasy novelette, with some romance, some violence, some Christianity and three Christmases.

Excerpt:

Last Christmas (Year One As a Vampire)

Vivian from Accounting cornered
him in the copy room, at the office Christmas party. She wore a red dress that
looked as though it had been spray painted over her voluptuous body, a
Titanic-sized ruby heart necklace, and scarlet lipstick. From the minute she’d
walked into the party, Alex began committing adultery with her in his heart.

“Take my advice,” said a man next
to Alex. “She wants to sell you something you don’t want to buy.”

A song throbbed in the
background: Last Christmas, I gave you my
heart…

Alex didn’t know him. The man had
the face of magazine model, and wore all black: a black silk suit that was much
too Italian for any employee of their fashion-challenged tech company, over a
black shirt with a black tie and an onyx cross tie pin. He pulled out a bottle
of tiny pills and popped one, just as Vivian hurried reached them.

Michael waved to Stacy, a three
hundred pound sys admin with eczema, Alex’s good friend since forever and
fellow sys admin. When Michael took her arm with a suave gesture, the mismatch
was obvious to everyone, even Stacy, who blushed, star-struck, and made no
argument when he made their good-byes even though they had just arrived. He led
her away. Alex bristled.

Poor Stacy. Her best hope was that Michael was just
using her for sex.

She touched his arm and sauntered
away, and he followed like a puppy. It occurred to him that Vivian outclassed
him as much as Michael. Michael was probably Vivian’s ex. Michael was probably
a martial arts expert—he moved with that kind of self-assurance, everything
manly that Alex lacked—and was waiting in the parking lot to kick Alex’s butt
even now. The thought made Alex rebel. Screw him. It wasn’t like Alex had done
anything with Vivian. He hadn’t even kissed her.

As soon as they reached the copy
room, Vivian shut the door, pushed Alex up against the copy machine and kissed
him.

Alex pushed her away.
“No…no…You’ve got the wrong idea.”

Damn. He was a little drunk, she
was sexy as hell, and this could go south fast, so he fumbled in his pocket for
a picture. It was a nine-month-old baby with big blue eyes, sitting in front of
the Christmas tree. Lynn had taken it just last week, to put on their holiday
cards. He held this between himself and Vivian the way a priest would hold up a
cross at an exorcism. Even if his marriage to Lynn had been a mistake, which
they had both realized too late, Alex wouldn’t cheat on her, or desert her, for
the sake of that little boy.

“That’s my son,” Alex said. “His
name is Bradley. So we can’t… you can’t… I can’t....”

“Aw.” Vivian took the picture and
tucked it back into his pocket without looking at it. “That’s so sweet.”

She grabbed his suit lapel and
pulled him closer. “It just makes me want you more.”

“Look, Vivian…”

Her grip was surprisingly strong,
and he couldn’t break free when she began nuzzling against his neck. Alex
thought she was giving him a hickey, until he died.

Links

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